Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment.
Everything Changes. The only thing that remains immovable across the centuries and fixes the character of a people is cooking.
The real, native South Seas food is lousy. You can’t eat it.
In the opera we call love, the libretto is almost nothing.
Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.
But when ill indeed, Even dismissing the doctor don’t always succeed.
Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.
Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night.
Labor is life; thought is light.
Because one doesn’t like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God.
Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.
If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.
In love, such a word, whispered, is a mysterious kiss of the soul to the soul.
I write with one hand, but I fight with both.
God has bestowed two gifts on man: hope and ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two.
The most excellent symbol of the people is the paving stone. One walks on it until it falls on one’s head.
Let us say it now: to be blind and to be loved, is indeed, upon this earth where nothing is complete, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness.
They say love is blindness of heart; I say not to love is blindness.
Religion, Society, and Nature – these are the three struggles of man.
Man does not understand nor accept immortality except on condition of self-remembrance.